Pension reform: can we rebalance the system without raising the retirement age?

2023 will be the year of pension reform. Suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this thorny government bill will finally be proposed by Elisabeth Borne on January 10, then presented to the Council of Ministers on the 23rd. In recent days, the Prime Minister has received various social partners to find an agreement… In vain.

According to information from Capital, the unions are all strongly opposed to raising the legal retirement age to 64 and 65. And for good reason: if the latest report from the Pensions Orientation Council (Cor) figures a deficit in the scheme at more than 10 billion euros by 2027, the associations denounce the use of certain indicators such as unemployment, the productivity rate or life expectancy.

To prove that the forecasts can evolve according to the elements taken into account, the CFE-CGC asked the Ministry of Labor to provide two estimates. The first with a constant life expectancy, and the other, with the possibility of a recovery in the share of GDP going to employees. These data were not provided by the ministry.

CGT, CFDT, FO… All the unions agree to call for general mobilization against the postponement of the legal retirement age if such a measure were presented on January 10. According to them, this proposal is not the only one capable of ensuring financial stability for the pension system. What are the proposed solutions? Anthology.

To avoid resorting to postponing the legal retirement age, the trade unions have proposed to Elisabeth Borne to increase employer and employee contributions. In the columns of Capital, Cyril Chabanier, head of the CFTC, explains: “We have estimated that a 0.8% increase in the pension contribution makes it possible to garner 10 billion euros, which plugs the hole. increase would be distributed at 0.4% for employer contributions and 0.4% for employee contributions, which would represent an increase in contributions of 4 to 5 euros per month for a salary at minimum wage.

In addition, the employment of older workers is a key element for many unions.

According to figures put forward by Dominique Corona, deputy secretary general of the National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions (Unsa), “there would be no problem financing pensions” if an additional 10% of seniors were employed. The solution would therefore be to find solutions for companies to keep seniors in employment, for example. A parameter already explored by the government, which intends to propose in its reform a “senior index” for companies with more than 50 employees.